Memory at Work in the Classroom:

Strategies to Help Underachieving Students

Francis Bailey, Ken Pransky

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781416617570
• eBook ISBN: 9781416618997
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Why do some students struggle to understand and retain information, while other students don't? The answer may well lie in the memory system, which is the root of all learning. In Memory at Work in the Classroom, Francis Bailey and Ken Pransky expertly guide you through the aspects of human memory most relevant to classroom teachers. Real classroom examples help to deepen your understanding of how memory systems play a central role in the learning process, as well as how culture plays a sometimes surprising role in memory formation and use.

The memory systems covered in the book are

* Working Memory: the gateway to learning
* Executive Function: the cognitive skills children need to independently orchestrate their memory systems in service to learning
*Semantic Memory: the storehouse of a person's knowledge of the world, including academic concepts, and the part of the memory system most affected by culture
* Episodic Memory: rich, multisensory personal memories of specific events
* Autobiographical Memory: one's sense of self, tied directly to student motivation

Although the techniques described apply to all students, the authors concentrate on explaining the source of struggling students' academic challenges and provide effective strategies for helping students become better learners.

Whether you're a new or a veteran teacher, this book will offer fresh insights into your students' learning difficulties and move you to explore classroom practices that align with the functioning of memory and the ways students learn.

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Chapter 1

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Why Learn About Memory?

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Wouldn't it be great to walk into a classroom full of students and feel like you really knew how they learned? To feel confident that the lessons you designed worked in sync with the way the brain works? To pinpoint problems in the learning process to help struggling students learn better?

We all want to do the best we can for our students. We spend hours and hours planning wonderful lessons, but we know that not all students benefit equally from our hard work. We agonize over students who struggle in our classrooms. We receive professional training in program after program—both what our districts make us do and what we do ourselves—to try to make the learning process work well for all students. But it still doesn't. So what are we missing?

The central idea of this book is that if we knew more about how the brain actually works in the process of learning, we would become more flexible, skillful, and successful teachers—and our students would be more successful learners. One of the challenges of teaching is that classroom teachers cannot focus on only one dimension of a learner: We must teach to the whole student—their cognitive, emotional, and social selves. We must balance their complex needs and unique characteristics with our curricular goals. This book shows the importance of memory in learning and how social learning affects memory and the complex learners we work with.

In spite of the many serious challenges of being public educators in this day and age, we are fortunate because we now know so much more about the human brain. Until recently, that was a door that was closed to us. But now that door is at least partly open, and we can begin to explore and use what we find on the other side. Cognitive science is transforming the way we understand our brains and offers many insights into how the memory system is integrally connected to the process of learning. With decades of research to draw upon and many new research tools to use, cognitive researchers have much to offer us in our work with students.¹

Much of cognitive research has been done in controlled research settings, and reading about it can often feel like wading through a swamp. But we educators must find practical ways to use the information emerging in cognitive science. This book is written by educators for educators to harness this emerging knowledge of the human brain and memory systems in the service of our students and our profession. In particular, this perspective will enable us to work more successfully with populations who struggle in our classrooms for whatever reason, including many low-income students, English language learners, special education students, and others.

For all too long, our field has operated like the enchanting logic employed by a character in this Iranian story:²

A neighbor of Mullah Nasruddin's woke up early one morning and went outside to stretch in the early light. He noticed the Mullah at his doorstep, throwing rice all around.

"Good morning, Mullah. And may I ask, what on earth are you doing throwing rice around like that?"

"Keeping away the lions," said the Mullah.

"Don't be silly," said the man. "There are no lions around here!"

"Aha!" said the Mullah, wagging a finger and smiling. "It works!"

Many things do work in the classroom—but not always for the reasons we think. We are barraged with "best practices," new programs, new movements in education, all claiming to have the answer to how to overcome inequalities. But the fundamental questions we address throughout this book are, How can a clearer understanding of memory and the brain help us understand teaching and learning? And how can this knowledge help us reach and teach struggling students?

Memory: Central to Learning

Knowledge and memory are inseparable—if you are in the knowledge business, then you are also in the memory business. An efficient memory system is a requirement for all learning, in or out of the classroom. At times, children do not seem to be learning what we want them to learn—and their memory systems are at the heart of that, too. We believe that it is crucial for teachers to understand why effective practices are effective for many students, and also why they may not be so effective for others. The key to understanding teaching and learning processes, including the breakdowns that sometimes happen, can be found by better understanding memory.

Consider the following scenarios. Do they resonate with your experiences as a teacher or remind you of other situations where you wondered, "What is going on?!"

Scenario #1: A teacher in 2nd grade is leading a discussion in a science unit on mammals. The teacher is focusing students on the physical traits that all mammals have in common. In the classroom discussion, one child begins to talk about her pet dog and why she likes to play with it. The teacher notes that this child usually approaches school subjects from her own personal experience and is slow to keep up with the flow of classroom learning. The teacher thinks, "Why can't this child stick to the topic?"

Scenario #2: A 5th grade student from Southeast Asia is being referred for a possible learning disability. His academic progress has been slow, although it doesn't seem to be an issue of language, as the student has pretty strong oral communication skills in English. In the testing, nothing specific shows up. The child is given an exercise to choose one object from a set of three or four objects that does not belong with the others. The very first item has pictures of a knife, fork, and cake. The student looks confused. When gently pressed for an answer, the student says, "I don't get it." The tester explains the directions again. The student says, "But they all belong together!"

Scenario #3: A 9th grade algebra class has a number of students who constantly get overwhelmed and confused. They seem to forget how to solve the kinds of problems they once seemed to know, they mix up terms and concepts, they skip steps, and they get low scores on tests after they seemed to know the material. No matter what the teacher does, these students almost always have the same kinds of issues, unit by unit by unit.

This book examines situations like these from the perspective of memory to help us understand why these situations occur, how to understand them, and how to work with them.

We all know teaching consists of many roles: lesson designer, curriculum specialist, instructor, assessor, psychologist, counselor, and even surrogate parent at times. One role that we urge teachers to take on through this book is that of "learning specialist." We find it ironic that while there can be no learning without the learner, out of all the factors we have to juggle in our various teaching roles, we may know least about the mechanics of learning! Many of us have been trained in schools of education and our school districts in teaching methodologies, curriculum mapping, assessment, using test data … but how learning is a function of the memory system? Not so much! Yet memory is a key system we need to troubleshoot when problems in learning arise.

So What Is Memory, Anyway?

In which of the following activities do you think memory plays a role?

• Driving a car and talking with a friend in the passenger seat
• Reading and understanding a news story
• Hearing a new word and being able recognize it and use it later
• Retracing one's steps to find a lost item
• Describing specific details about an important personal event from the distant past
• Adding the numbers 12, 3, and 5 together
• Recognizing the face of a loved one
• Describing what you did yesterday
• Knowing that the capital of Massachusetts is Boston

Memory plays a role in all of these activities. For many of us, memory is synonymous primarily with just "remembering" a past personal experience or "memorizing" some new information. So it may come as a surprise that human memory plays such a central role in learning. Memory is the label we use for cognitive processes that are central to our lives and sense of who we are, and they cross the boundaries of all types of activity in our lives. We draw on various elements of our memory systems for all thinking, and all learning.

Memory is fundamental to our humanity and identity. Who would we be without our memories of past events and people in our lives? How would we survive without the ability to remember where we have gone and what we did in the past? How would we learn without the ability to store information away and retrieve it when needed? As humans evolved, we developed memory systems that allowed us to store and retrieve information necessary to take care of basic survival needs, such as gathering food, reproducing, and responding to danger by fleeing or fighting.

We also developed memory systems that are central to human cultural evolution. Our ability to learn and manipulate cultural symbol systems and their meanings has provided the social knowledge and organization that underlie modern life. With the development of language, which is also intimately connected to the memory system, humans gained the ability to work skillfully in the abstract realm of thought, a skill that is highly prized in schools.

Every day in classrooms, students struggle to learn the vast ocean of knowledge that sweeps over them. New concepts, images, names, dates, and formulas roll in. Some students float to the top and swim around happily, others flounder and struggle, while yet others sink like stones. If we reflect on this honestly, we notice that who swims, who flounders, and who sinks is pretty predictable, all things being equal.³ But don't we all want to know how to help all students float and swim, not only the students who are most likely to do so anyway? After all, we should measure our effectiveness as teachers not by the achievement of the strongest swimmers (who are likely to achieve, with or without us), but by the achievement of those who need us most. When we work with the most academically challenged students in our schools, such as English language learners or students with individual educational plans, we have the most to gain from understanding how the memory system impacts learning, and how to adapt our instruction to reflect those realities. Understanding how memory works can help us get all students to swim!

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Endnotes

¹ Medina (2008); Dehn (2008); Sousa (2011); Ambrose et al. (2010).

² Shah (1972).

³ It is well established that poverty, race, cultural background, and linguistic diversity are all predictors of academic underachievement of U.S. public school students (Hochschild, 2003; Kozol, 1992; Spring, 2011).

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Chapter 2

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Five Core Memory and Learning Concepts

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This chapter establishes five core realities about memory and the hardwiring of the brain that define learning at the physical level. It's important to ground our understanding of human learning in the realities of neurological and physiological processes.¹ This understanding pulls back the curtain on educational philosophy and methodology and allows us to shine a light on learning "the way it is," based on how our brain works, at least to the degree that early 21st century science allows. We refer to these five elements throughout this book.

1. Learning Means the Efficient Functioning of the Memory System

Without memory, learning would be impossible. The very act of thinking² cannot happen without engaging our brain's memory system. To a large degree, the process of learning means

1. Creating a representation of some type of information;
2. Storing that representation in long-term memory;
3. Being able to retrieve that representation to interpret reality and solve new problems.

In order to make meaning of the world around us and problem solve (e.g., apply math to a story problem, interpret a poem or graph, write an essay), all the components of our memory systems need to be working in sync. So, one of our primary roles as teachers must be helping students shape their memory systems to the demands of the school curriculum. We must also shape the focus and flow of the school curriculum to our students' memory systems. The memory systems explored in this book are represented in Figure 2.1.

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Figure 2.1. Human Memory Systems

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2. Memory Is a Physical Process

The brain is continually being shaped through experience. When we learn, a physical change takes place in our brain. Our ability to be lifelong learners, to continue to update our memory systems, is termed "neuroplasticity."³ Anyone can learn at any time. Understanding the physical side of the learning process can help us become better learning specialists in the classroom.

Our brains have a system of neurons—billions upon billions upon billions of them—linked together through a web of connections through axons (the armlike parts that send information to other neurons by electrochemical means) and dendrites (the fingerlike part of the neuron that receives information from other neurons). Data signals pass from neuron to neuron—the axon of one neuron meets the dendrite of another. There are actually tiny gaps between neurons, and signals jump these gaps aided by complex chemical processes. (See Figure 2.2.)

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Figure 2.2. Neuron Diagrams

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When we learn, our neurons are bombarded with all kinds of input, clamoring for their attention, sort of like being on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at peak trading hours—it is lively and cacophonous! Sometimes the loudest shouts are "Yes, yes, go for it!" and we choose it, at other times, "No, no, not that!" and we let that go. So, neurons can either send data along the neural web or inhibit the data. In fact, one of the main processes of learning is inhibiting unwanted information and selecting desired information. The things we exclude do not make it into our neural network and cannot be stored for future use. Successful learners are successful in part because they can select the right information to pass along and store. Conversely, this is a key obstacle for many struggling learners.

What to focus on, what to let pass? It seems easy enough, but when that curricular tidal wave is rolling over ou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Why Learn about Memory?
• Chapter 2. Five Core Memory and Learning Concepts
• Chapter 3. Why do the Cultural Roots of Learning Matter So Much?
• Chapter 4. Working Memory: The Doorway to Learning
• Chapter 5. Executive Functions
• Chapter 6. Semantic Memory: Foundation of Academic Learning
• Chapter 7. Semantic Memory: A Sociocultural Perspective
• Chapter 8. Episodic Memory
• Chapter 9. Autobiographical Memory
• Chapter 10. Practice
• Chapter 11. Conclusion
• References
• About the Authors
• Study Guide
• Copyright